All potent Reason! what thy wond'rous light? A shooting star athwart a polar night; A bubble's gleam amid the boundless main; A sparkling sand on waste Arabia's plain: E'en such, vain Power, thy limited control, E'en such thou art, to mans mysterious soul!
Presumptuous man! would'st thou aspiring reach True wisdom's height, let conscious weakness teach Thy feeble soul her poor dependant state, Nor madly war with Nature to be great.
Come then, Humility, thou surest guide! On earth again with frenzied men reside; Tear the dark film of vanity and lies, And inward turn their renovated eyes; In aspect true let each himself behold, By self deform'd in pride's portentous mould. And if thy voice, on Bethl'em's holy plain Once heard, can reach their flinty hearts again, Teach them, as fearful of a serpent's gaze, Teach them to shun the gloating eye of praise; That slightest swervings from their nature's plan Make them a lie, and poison all the man, 'Till black corruption spread the soul throughout, Whence thick and fierce, like fabled mandrakes, sprout The seeds of rice with more than tropick force, Exhausting in the growth their very vital source.
Nor wrongly deem the cynick muse aspires, With monkish tears to quench our nobler fires. Let honest pride our humble hearts inflame, First to deserve, ere yet we look to, fame; Not fame miscall'd, the mob's applauding stare; This monsters have, proportion'd as they're rare; But that sweet praise, the tribute of the good, For wisdom gain'd, through love of truth pursued. Coeval with our birth, this pure desire Was given to lift our grov'ling natures higher, Till that high praise, by genuine merit wrung From men's slow justice, shall employ the tongue Of yon Supernal Court, from whom may flow Or bliss eternal or eternal wo. And since in all this hope exalting lives, Let virtuous toil improve what Nature gives: Each in his sphere some glorious palm may gain, For Heaven all-wise created nought in vain.
Oh, task sublime, to till the human soil Where fruits immortal crown the lab'ror's toil! Where deathless flowers, in everlasting bloom, May gales from Heaven with odorous sweets perfume; Whose fragrance still when man's last work is done, And hoary Time his final course has run, Thro' ages back, with fresh'ning power shall last, Mark his long track, and linger where he past!